The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office of Spain demands 63 years in prison and a fine of 42.4 million euros for former Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Rodrigo Rato in a lawsuit about the alleged illegal origin of his assets.

Rato, who was vice president of the Spanish government, is accused of eleven tax crimes, money laundering and business corruption.

In a document presented this Friday, prosecutors confirmed their allegations and also increased the amount of fees allegedly stolen in fiscal year 2008, following a revision of the wording by Spain’s National Fraud Investigation Office.

For their part, sources close to the former banker called the position of the prosecutor’s office “extreme,” considering that it did not take into account anything that happened during the trial of the man who was the managing director of the IMF between 2004 and 2007.

Leaving the court, Rato explained that since the conclusion would no longer be secret, He does not rule out the possibility of pressing charges.

The prosecutor’s office said in its letter that it had identified an unjustified increase in assets between 2005 and 2015, in addition to income from movable capital abroad, which was also not declared to the Spanish Treasury, taxation of professional services through its companies and that Rato was holding hidden assets. . into the Spanish treasury through various foreign companies.

The defendant claims that in his capacity as Managing Director of the IMF he lived in Washington, where the organization is headquartered, but the charges They claim that their tax residence was in Spain.

On May 6, the hearings will resume with the announcement of the final report of the prosecutor’s office, and then it will be the turn of the defense and the right to the last word of the accused, which Rato assured that he is ready to implement. .

Rato was Spain’s vice president and economy minister between 1996 and 2004 during the government of conservative José María Aznar, and then headed the IMF until his resignation in 2007, after which he led Spanish financial group Bankia between 2010 and 2012 and since then in 2013 he has been an advisor for Latin America and Europe to the Spanish multinational Telefónica.

In 2017, he was sentenced in Spain to four and a half years in prison for embezzling funds in a case involving the financial institution, for which he was imprisoned until his parole in 2021.

EFE